PISA 2009 at a Glance is a companion publication to PISA 2009 Results, the six-volume report on the 2009 survey conducted by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies. Its triennial assessments of 15-year-olds focus on reading, mathematics and science.

PISA 2009 at a Glance provides easily accessible data on the some of the main issues analysed in the full report:

What students know and can do: How do students compare in the knowledge and skills they show at school? Which countries are the best performers? Which perform poorly?

Overcoming social background: Does a student’s socio-economic background affect his or her performance in school?

Learning to learn: Are there some types of reading, and some ways of learning, that are better for students than others?

What makes a school successful?: What traits do high-performing schools have in common?

Each issue is presented on a two-page spread. The left-hand page explains what the issue means both for students and for participating countries and economies, discusses the main findings and provides readers with a roadmap for finding out more in other OECD publications and databases. The right-hand page contains clearly presented charts and tables, accompanied by dynamic hyperlinks (StatLinks) that direct readers to the corresponding data in Excel™ format.

PISA 2009 at a Glance is an ideal introduction to PISA and to the OECD’s rich trove of internationally comparable data on education and learning.

The mean PISA reading score for each country/economy summarises the performance of students overall. These scores show that reading standards vary greatly among countries and economies in ways that cannot simply be attributed to the countries’ different stages of economic development. A nation’s wealth influences educational success; but GDP per capita now explains only 6% of the differences between countries’ average student performance. The other 94% of diffe-rences reflect the fact that two countries of similar prosperity can produce very different educational results.